This trip was to attend the wedding of my niece Elaine and her husband to be Scott. We flew out on Saturday 6th. October arriving in late evening and returned in the early hours of Sunday 14th. October. The hotel was the Athena Beach Hotel in Kato Paphos, about 1.25 miles south of Paphos harbour.

Day 1 – 7th. Oct – up early (6:40) and out with my son and brother in law for a pre-breakfast walk along the seashore path towards Paphos Harbour. The first wildlife seen were House Sparrows in the palm trees around the hotel, quickly followed by Hooded Crows which also favoured the shore area near the hotels. Next we saw a Kingfisher (f) on a landing stage which flew north and stopped at various rocks along the coast to look for its breakfast.

   A plant 

that had a spike consisting of white flowers was spotted next, this proved to be Sea Squill (Urginea maritima). The next bird I saw appeared at first to be a wading bird which flew parallel to the shore before landing several hundred yards away behind a chain link fence. Whilst I went off in search of it my companions made a more leisurely pace and missed it! I got within a 100 m trained my camera on it, just made out a long beak before it flew away behind a hoarding. It was a Hoopoe, my only sighting of the week. When they caught me up it transpired that I had missed a Wheatear that was on the rocks by the shore. We never reached the harbour but had to turn back to rendezvous for breakfast with the rest of the party.

Later that morning on a short walk with my wife along the footway by the shore we spotted a number of Red-veined Darter Dragonflies, both male and female

and 6+ Starred Agama Lizards.

After lunch my son, brother-in-law and myself set off along the coastal path again, this time to the east. Here we saw a single Clouded Yellow Butterfly, 2 or 3 tiny blue butterflies which turned out to be the African Grass Blue and 2 or 3 smaller lizards, the Schreiber’s Fringe-fingered Lizard.